Saturday, July 8, 2017

"You Have no Right to Talk About Syria's Future!" Putin Slaps the US Secretary of State

Breakingnews.sy - - translated by Samer Hussein
Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed that the future of Syria and
its president lies in the hands of the Syrian people, not the US
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

“The US Secretary of State is not a citizen of Syria and has no
right to talk about its future and the fate of its president. This shall
only be decided by the Syrian people”, Putin was heard saying during a
press conference of the G20 summit in Hamburg.

He stressed that the US stance towards Syria has not drastically
changed, although it has become more pragmatic, adding that the United
States also played a certain role in decline of violence in the country.

He then spoke about a positive understanding on the issue of reaching a
ceasefire agreement in the southwest of Syria and invited his Jordanian
and Israeli partners to cooperate, pointing out that Syrian territorial
integrity has to be preserved at all costs.

He also revealed that Russia maintains contacts with several Kurdish
factions in Syria, despite not having that close relations with these
factions as US does, noting that Russia stands on preserving Syria’s
unity and territorial integrity, which makes its position on the Kurdish
a bit different than that of the US.

On the issue of settlement of the Syrian crisis, Putin said Russia will
continue with its policy of restoring peace and stability to the country
and will keep cooperating with its Syrian, Iranian and Turkish
partners, noting that the Syrian issue has been thoroughly discussed
with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the summit.

Regarding the ongoing Gulf Cooperation Council crisis between Qatar and
some of the remaining GCC states, notably Saudi Arabia, Putin stressed
he has talked with Qatari leadership on the issue before, pointing out
that the issue has to be solved quickly as it could negatively impact
the stability and economic situation in the region.

Speaking of his meeting with the US counterpart Donald Trump, Putin said
that real life Trump is a rather different person than the one we know
from TV, as he is way more rational, adding that the outcome of the
talks was a very positive one and will likely provide the ground for
normalization of relations between the countries.

In regards to the issue of the alleged Russian interference in the last
US presidential election and cyber security in general, Putin said there
is no need to suspect that Russia would ever dare to interfere in the
US presidential election, adding that the two countries are planning to
set up a new working group that would carefully monitor all sensitive
issues, related to cyber security.

Before finishing his speech, Putin stressed that Western media is trying
to interfere in Russia 's internal affairs, adding that Moscow knows
this, but is watching the whole thing quietly.